Engineering News

I think this article is an excellent example of how badly people misunderstand Biology. Too ofter people will anthropomorphize lower life forms in a misguided attempt to describe their actions. For instance, take the following paragraph from this article:

If B. subtilis individuals are growing in a food-poor area, they release chemicals into their surroundings. These essentially tell their neighbours: "There's not much food here, so clear off or we'll both starve."

Here the author makes the common mistake of attributing motive to an action taken by the organism. When the organism releases chemicals into there surroundings, it is merely a chemical reaction to the food poor environment. Other like organisms have chemical reactions that forces them away from the region where that organism has released those chemicals. This is simply a series of convenient chemical reactions that have evolved over millions of years, nothing more.

The organisms aren't communicating anymore that the Earth communicates with the moon to stay in orbit. It's simply chemistry. How is this different that communication?

When humans are confronted with a new problem, they communicate in order to coordinate a solution. This is not what these organisms are doing, yet that is precisely what the author has implied. It is misconceptions like these that lead to such misconceptions regarding evolution and biology.

All of the examples the author sites are simply chemical reactions. The author has no real understanding of the biology drawing parallels between the higher functioning of animals that requires billions of cells and the simple chemistry of these primitive organisms. It is a terrible article.

A lot of this chemical communication sounds like the electrochemical communication that takes place in the neurons of our brains. It's no wonder that it "appears" to be "conscious". Self organizing behavior in simple lifeforms is nothing new.

At least they're not driving thei own wheel chairs.

It may sound similiar, but it is much different, that's the point. What this organism is doing is much closer to ice melting due to salt than it is to human communication. The human brain consist of 10s of billions of cells with 100s of trillions of possible connections. This organism has 1 cell with one connection via this chemical. It is more akin to the mercury switch on a bomb than it is a human. You wouldn't say a mercury switch is "talking to the bomb telling it to explode" unless you were being poetic.

It frustrates me to no end that people simply cannot get out of their own way when it comes to this. Listen, it is in our nature to given human characteristics to "things", there was a recent CR4 article I posted where soldiers in Iraq were taking chances with their lives to save remote control robots they fight with. In order to view biology, especially single celled biology objectively, you have to step out of yourself to avoid this instinct.

I know that this seems like a minor thing to go off about, but the biggest roadblocks to accepting science are usually caused from people being unable to detach their animal instincts from their reasoning. Our instinct is towards empathy, it's why we feel affection for inanimate objects, it's probably a big part of why we are so successful, but when you try to humanize a single cell organism, you just confuse the facts.

It's just frustrating sometimes to watch people like this author so confidently go off the deep end. To have no self awareness of how wrong he is, how misguided his analogies are is just.......scary in a way, I don't know how else to put it.

It gets worse if you have a look at some of the linked articles

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18424745.300-a-billion-bacteria-brains-are-better-than-one.html

IN A small dish in a lab at the University of Chicago, millions of bacteria are deliberating among themselves. For hours there is no activity then suddenly, having taken a vote and come to a decision

<cringe>

I can see where they are coming from (trying to simplify a technical article for a larger audience than dedicated microbiologists), but sometimes a misplaced or misused word or phrase (or expressed own personal view) here or there can change the real meaning of the science they are trying to report. Reporters are absolutely notorious for this and even New Scientist isn't immune.

ROFL Next thing we'll be getting coverage of their dirty tactics in election campaigns. That is a lot worse than the original article, which is really not that bad. At least it says up front:

"This behaviour isn't the result of conscious thought – the sort you find in humans and other complex animals – because single-celled organisms don't have nervous systems, let alone brains."

I do not have a problem with acknowledging that there is awareness implicit in chemical signalling amongst single cell organisms. I don't expect that cellular level of awareness to be at all similar to human thought. But I see no reason to dismiss it as "a chemical reaction" either.

As for empathy - it's a virtue. Those who don't have it are sociopaths or psychopaths.

You Wrote:"I do not have a problem with acknowledging that there is awareness implicit in chemical signalling amongst single cell organisms. I don't expect that cellular level of awareness to be at all similar to human thought. But I see no reason to dismiss it as "a chemical reaction" either."

Yes and it's a problem that you don't have a problem. There is no "awareness", it is only a chemical reaction. I'm not dismissing it as chemical, that is what it is. The fact that you don't understand this illustrates exactly what I'm complaining about. Such misconceptions as yours perpetuates misunderstanding (I'm sure your a smart guy (or gal), but you've got this subject all wrong).

You Wrote:"As for empathy - it's a virtue. Those who don't have it are sociopaths or psychopaths."

Of course it is, but not when you are analyzing the function of baceteria because it leads to what you're doing, giving it a lot more credit than it deserves.

When we attribute characteristics of life forms with trillions of cells to single celled organisms it is misguided and wrong.

When we attribute characteristics of life forms with trillions of cells to single celled organisms it is misguided and wrong.

Only in degree - both you and your bacterium are born, live, eat, reproduce, interact with their environment and die for instance. Bacteria don't write books, but neither do individual neurons. Intelligent behavior is the result of the organization of individual cells.

In fact, what you consider to be your body contains 10X as many bacteria cells as human cells. So, where does the bacteria leave off and the human begin?

No, not to a degree.

Bacterium are born? In what sense? They reproduce by splitting in half (here's a link explaining the process).

Prokaryotes are primitive compared to even just one of our cells (we are Eukaryotes). They have no cell nucleus, few if any internal membranes, rarely exceed single cell, and reproduce by fission.

I'll say it again and again until it starts sinking into you guys and gals who are insisting misunderstanding the nature of lower life forms, bacteria are just glorified chemical reactions. All of their actions are a predetermined chemical reaction to their surroundings or internal chemistry. They don't signal, they don't talk, they don't communicate any more than water particles "tell" each other to form ice.

You Wrote:"In fact, what you consider to be your body contains 10X as many bacteria cells as human cells. So, where does the bacteria leave off and the human begin?"

First of all the above is by number, not mass. Mass of humans are dominated by human cells. Bacteria cells tend to be much smaller than regular cells. It's true that humans would die without bacteria, but we also would die without salt, so that doesn't exactly prove anything, does it?

You are giving bacteria a sort of spirtual "lifeness" that it doesn't have. It's true that complex life can evolve from it, and for that let me be the first to thank bacteria, but bacteria itself is just a starting point, a self contained, self replicating chemical reaction.

From your article on Prokaryotes:

Sociality

While prokaryotes are still commonly imagined to be strictly unicellular, most are capable of forming stable aggregate communities. When such communities are encased in a stabilizing polymer matrix ("slime"), they may be called "biofilms". Cutting edge research shows that, like those in multicellular organisms, cells in biofilms often show distinct patterns of gene expression (phenotypic differentiation) in time and space. Also, like multicellular eukaryotes, these changes in expression appear to often result from cell-to-cell signaling, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing.

Biofilms may be highly heterogeneous and structurally complex and may attach to solid surfaces, or exist at liquid-air interfaces, or potentially even liquid-liquid interfaces. Bacterial biofilms are often comprised of microcolonies (approximately dome-shaped masses of bacteria and matrix) separated by "voids" through which the medium (e.g. water) may flow relatively uninhibited. The microcolonies may join together above the substratum to form a continuous layer, closing the network of channels separating microcolonies. This structural complexity—combined with observations that oxygen limitation (a ubiquitous challenge for anything growing in size beyond the scale of diffusion) is at least partially eased by movement of medium throughout the biofilm—has led some to speculate that this may constitute a circulatory system ^[10].

It is not surprising that many researchers have started calling prokaryotic communities multicellular (for example ^[11]). Differential cell expression, collective behavior, signaling, programmed cell death, and (in some cases) discrete biological dispersal events all seem to point in this direction. However, these colonies are seldom if ever founded by a single founder (in the way that animals and plants are founded by single cells), which presents a number of theoretical issues. Most explanations of co-operation and the evolution of multicellularity have focused on high relatedness between members of a group (or colony, or whole organism). If a copy of a gene is present in all members of a group, behaviors that promote cooperation between members may permit those members to have (on average) greater fitness than a similar group of selfish individuals^[12] (see inclusive fitness and Hamilton's rule). What to make of prokaryotic communities clearly founded by many (most likely unrelated) individuals, yet defined by (apparently) high levels of cooperation, communication, and coordinated behavior?

It is likely that these instances of prokaryotic sociality are the rule rather than the exception, a fact that has serious implications for the way we view prokaryotes in general and the way we deal with them in medicine. Bacterial biofilms may be 100x more resistant to antibiotics than free-living unicells and may be nearly impossible to remove from surfaces once they have colonized them^[13]. Other aspects of bacterial cooperation—such as bacterial conjugation and quorum-sensing mediated pathogenicity—present additional challenges to researchers and medical professionals seeking to treat the associated diseases.

You know, I was going to write an explanation of how quorum sensing with regard to bacteria is just another example of poor naming and it is in fact glorified chemistry, but why should I bother? It's obvious you don't know anything about quorum sensing, you just highlighted it because it sounded remotely like what you believe in a wikipedia article.

You believe whatever you want.

Actually, I do know what quorum sensing is - we use it all the time in neural net computing. Which goes back to my original point - the behavior of a single bacterium in a group is analogous to the behavior of a single neuron in a brain.

I expect you're done with me though, base on past experience.

No, I'm happy to respond to posts where you talk. I just don't have any interest in responding to a cut and pasted wikipedia article where you make no comments, as if it is somehow self evident.

Here's some examples of how the bacteria "talk" to each other (here is the link):

Biologists refer to the molecules above as "languages". Do you really believe any of those molecules above are truely languages? It's a poetic and completely unrealistic way to put it. Don't Overstate it The problem as I see it is that the term "communicate" is used. The communication used by a bacteria quorum are chemical reactions. When such and such occurs, a chemical is released which elicits a response in the bacteria that come in contact with said chemical. Bees, which we all agree are primative as compared to humans, do an elaborate dance to illustrate the location of flowers. Communication of insects can be categorized in the following way: The language of insects may be regarded as mimetic, when emotions are expressed by gestures or acts; pteratic, when by wing vibrations; spiracular, when made known by sounds issuing from the breathing tubes or spiracles; stridulatory, when conveyed by the friction of one organ against another; and antennal, when the an­tennae, or "feelers," are the media of communication. Insects can communicate in all these ways. I don't need to list birds, reptiles, fish and mammals because we all know they communicate in extroidinary complexed ways including motion, sound, contact, etc. Bacteria send out a chemicals in response to particular chemical conditions.

Although I've had my differences with you in the past regarding global warming, I do want to point out that quorum sensing is an excellent topic to investigate with regards to bacteria. I still believe the that calling bacteria interaction "communication" is hyperbole and in fact bacteria tend to use chemicals to interact more out of the chemistry of their environment rather than any conscious effort, I think it is insightful that these single celled organisms can interact in a multicellular way, from an evolutionary standpoint. Anyone reading this thread would benefit from the links regarding the Quorum communication.

Pseudo-science.